hat Hideyoshi
would be compelled to carry on three wars at the same time. Hideyoshi
met this combination with his usual astuteness. He commissioned
Uesugi Kagekatsu to attack the Sasa troops in rear while Maeda
Toshiiye menaced them from the front; he told off Hachisuka to oppose
the soldier-monks of Kii; he posted Sengoku Hidehisa in Awaji to hold
in check the forces of Chosokabe Motochika, and he stationed Ukita
Hideiye at Okayama to provide against the contingency of hostility on
the part of the Mori family. Fighting commenced in the province of
Ise, and success at the outset crowned the arms of Hideyoshi's
generals. They captured two castles, and Ieyasu thereupon pushed his
van to an isolated hill called Komaki-yama, nearly equidistant from
the castles of Inu-yama and Kiyosu, in Owari, which he entrenched
strongly, and there awaited the onset of the Osaka army. The war thus
came to be known as that of Komaki.

Hideyoshi himself would have set out for the field on the 19th of
March, but he was obliged to postpone his departure for some days,
until Kuroda and Hachisuka had broken the offensive strength of the
monks of Kii. It thus fell out that he did not reach the province of
Owari until the 27th of March. His army is said to have numbered one
hundred and twenty thousand men. It is commonly alleged that this was
the only war between Ieyasu and Hideyoshi, and that the latter
suffered defeat at the hands of the former. But the fact is that two
of Hideyoshi's generals, Ikeda Nobuteru and Mori Nagayoshi, acted in
direct contravention of his orders, and thus precipitated a
catastrophe for which Hideyoshi cannot justly be held responsible.
These two captains argued that as Ieyasu had massed a large force at
Komaki and at the Obata entrenchments in the same district, he had
probably left his base in Mikawa comparatively undefended. They
proposed, therefore, to lead a force against Mikawa. Hideyoshi showed
great reluctance to sanction this movement, but he allowed himself to
be at last persuaded, with the explicit reservation that no success
obtained in Mikawa province should be followed up, and that whatever
the achievement of Nobukatsu's troops, they should at once rejoin the
main army in Owari.

Unquestionably Hideyoshi had in vivid recollection the disaster which
had overtaken Katsuiye at Shizugatake. Ieyasu, fully cognizant of the
situation through the medium of a spy, knew the limitations set by
Hideyoshi. On April